- Yg. 1926, No. 31 -

The Freidenkervereine once had posted a poster in Stuttgart, which was called upon to quit the church with reference to the behavior of the church in the referendum on the princely assets. For the churches are not on the side of the weary and laden: they are not people's, but princely churches. That's why they did not protest when the old people, the wards and the small savers were expropriated by inflation.

This latter statement (only these) is referred to in the Stuttgart Protestant Gemeindeblatt as a "long refuted slander". "On the contrary, the churches have, on the contrary, campaigned in good time and with the utmost vigor for a fair and equitable revaluation."

If a sentence starts with “known”, I tend to be a little suspicious of its content. Perhaps one could also, if one wanted to be pedantic, find that the “known” timely and emphatic advocacy of the Church for a “as far as possible” subsequent revaluation and its behavior during inflation were two pairs of boots; that something completely different is being disputed here than what has been claimed. But let's fight the doubt, as was recommended to us back then in the confirmation class, and let's just believe both: that the church fought promptly and emphatically against inflation and for revaluation.

Then at first only the one thing remains incomprehensible: that we nailed free thinkers have noticed nothing of this "known" activity of the church.

Where, when, how may it have been exercised?

Were mass removals, the clerical clergy at the top? Mass meetings with pastors of both faculties as flaming speakers?

But no, that's how the communists do it, not the church people. What would that look like, watch out, when consistorial councils took to the streets?

But probably the "Evangelische Preßverband" and the Volksverein in Mönchen-Gladbach opened a press campaign? The German newspapers flooded with articles, essays, calls against inflation or for appreciation? Or has the church sent urgent requests to parliaments? Those who are close to them are "timely" and "emphatic", they want to stand up for justice or for the sake of Jesus Christ against inflation or for revaluation?

Damn it again, that I have learned nothing, but nothing at all. Should the newspapers all be in the money of the devil and throw the whole fight of the church against inflation straight into the wastebasket?

Stop, hold! Now I'm getting a light! The church does not fight its battles on the street or on paper. Does not she have her own arena, where she unfolds her authority and where, as we know, nobody talks to her: the church?

So it will probably be on all pulpits in Germany with zeal against the fraud on the widows and orphans to have gone to field. For weeks and months, on time and with all emphasis. How must the churches have echoed from the pious wrath of pastors and priests, sayings of the prophet and Jesus! How it may have been for the winners of the inflation, the rich and powerful in their chairs! How must the weary and the loaded, the deceived and the stolen have breathed as the Christian clergy came to their aid in their misery? Through the churches and prayer houses of all Germany a wave must be roared, a wave of new morality, a storm of indignation against the immoral state, which takes those who have little or nothing, and those who have!

That I have noticed nothing of it, I am now certainly alone guilty. Because I never go to church.

1926, 31 Kazenwadel